I am the Storm

We each retired to our separate rooms, but I found I could not sleep. Castor had been right, a storm was rolling in. I spent an ahn with Charm, reading one of her favorite books to her, before I tucked her in for the night. Luckily, my room adjoined hers and I would hear if she needed me.

He was so close, just across the hallway, and yet he seemed further out of reach to me then all the months, years he had been gone.

I stood gazing out of the large picture window, which provided me the perfect view of the storm, which was now releasing its full fury. Branches twisted in the wind, the heavy drops pulling the leaves from their limbs.

I felt.. lost, the numbness was beginning to wear off., but the rain was calming to me, somehow tranquil despite all its anger, and I could hear the thunder looming closer, along with the bright flashes of lightening. And then I began to tremble. As much as I love a storm, the power behind this one was awe inspiring, and drawing me closer. I stepped to the window, the heat of my palms flushed against the coolness of glass, as if somehow, I might become a part of it. I couldn't have been more correct. I could see it, the tree being struck by a brilliant shard of flickering fire, and I could see the top of it falling.. towards me, but I couldn't move, my feet transplanted in quicksand. Before I knew it, I heard the snap of thunder echoing around me, and felt the shards of glass that were hurling through the once intact window I had been standing against. I think I screamed and then closed my eyes, waiting to feel the impending impaling of a branch through my chest, but instead, I felt the weight and force of it against me, knocking me to the ground and ripping the air from my lungs. Castor was suddenly beside me, both of us fighting against the ancient limbs that were clawing at us. My.. death dream. Or so it felt.

He picked my up and carried me to his room and I started to cry. Even though beyond the bits of glass in my hair, and a few scratches I was fine, inside I was an emotional outcast, unable to control or define that part of me that was usually so quiet and adept. I sobbed like a child, clutching his arm, his shoulder, whatever part was available to me.

Soaking wet, I pulled myself from my clothing while he retrieved for me something dry to wear, a shift of green silk, something he had picked for me without my even knowing it. He tended my cuts and he bid me to rest, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to sleep.

I was quiet for a time, still, but through all this I was raging inside. I wanted him, near me, around me, inside of me. I wanted to feel his body pressed against mine. I wanted to feel his breath on my neck. I wanted him to lay beside me, and my arm extended, with fur in hand, opening it in invitation to him. Two ahns ago he was belittling me, and now I wanted nothing more than to nestle up next to him and forget. Something he granted me.

We kissed. We cuddled. And before I knew it, I was on his lap, a hungry meeting of lips caught within the tempestuous liaison of surreal iniquity.

The wind had blown open the shuttered windows, ruffling the drapes in lingering laps of an icy tongue. The room grew cold, heat encapsulated only within the two shadowed forms now entangled atop the bed, intertwined in irresponsible reasoning.

I was shivering, my body spiked in cold rapture, my moans bordering on quiet sobs. I wanted him, this man who had hurt me over and over. I needed him, lost without the crux to which I had surrendered. The storm continued to resound around me, but it wasn't the storm outside that frightened, that threatened me, but the storm that was raging inside of me. The brutal force of nature that I had succumbed to so long ago.

I am nothing. Without him I am only vapor. He is the catalyst to my existence.
And..
I am the storm.